


This Time, Everybody Lives

by Abbie



Series: The AU AU [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s01e21 The Undertaking, F/M, Gen, Surprise Kissing, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 05:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21221600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abbie/pseuds/Abbie
Summary: In the thick of the Undertaking, Tommy and the future Felicity go into the tunnels to tackle the second Markov device and change everything. Success bubbles over, but reality crashes harder than they can yet know.





	This Time, Everybody Lives

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt by StoriesOfImagination: Flommy & “The excitement of a moment/situation bubbling over into a first kiss followed by them realizing ‘Oh shit I kissed them’”

Sweat slicked like ice down Felicity’s spine, her fingers shaking, fumbling on the keypad and exposed wires as she worked desperately to disarm the Markov device. In her ear, her younger self talked Detective Lance through the final steps of disabling the first device–the only one that Felicity knew about.

Tremors rumbled like inverted thunder through the ground under her feet. Tommy, standing a few feet away with wide eyes and gun in hand, cursed.

“The first one’s down,” he reported, somewhat needlessly as he listened in to the same oneway feed in Felicity’s ear. “What’s wrong, why haven’t we got this one?”

There was panic in his eyes, the white of his cheeks, the tightness of his voice. The stakes could not possibly be higher. If they failed at this, hundreds would die, just as they’d died in Felicity’s timeline. Tommy had been supposed to be one of them, but he was here instead, helping her change it all.

And if he didn’t, if he was here, with her, underground, and they failed anyways, then Laurel would pay the cost and die in his place. He would never reach her in time.

Choking back her own fear and a rising, salty knot of frustrated tears, Felicity hissed, “It’s not the same. I can’t believe—I should have _known_ it’d be set up differently, of _course_.”

Paling even further, Tommy stalked up close to her, pressing both hands to the back of his head, the grip of the gun glinting in the low tunnel lights against his hair. “You can’t do it? Did we—was this for_ nothing_?”

“No!” Felicity all but bellowed, even as another mild tremor—but stronger this time—rattled up the bones of her legs. “No, I can, I can do this, I just, I have to figure out what protocols they changed, it’s just a different pattern I think, but I, but…”

“Come on,” Tommy pleaded, low, desperate, crowding so close his shirt brushed her bare arm. “Come on, come on, come _on_, you can do this, you _have_ to do this.”

“I’m _trying_,” she all but sobbed, hands shaking like she’d taken the earthquake generated by the machine inside herself. “I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m–”

She broke off with a shocked, triumphant cry. “I did it!”

The machine’s display beeped, flashing a red alert message, and then—went dark. 

Tommy stared at it, turned his head to gape at Felicity. “You did it,” he whispered.

She turned to him, raising those shaking hands in front of her mouth, lips slowly spreading in a grin. “I _did it_.”

“You _did it_!” He shouted, grasping her upper arms and slowly grinning back. “You fucking did it, Felicity!”

She laughed, stunned, _relieved_. He laughed too.

“Everybody lives,” she gushed, beaming. “This time, everybody lives.”

Tommy’s head threw back and he crowed in victory, the shout ringing down the tunnel walls. Suddenly, he dropped his grip from Felicity’s arms to her waist, lifting her and spinning her around. She clutched at his shoulders, their shared laughter echoing around them.

Tommy stumbled a little on the last, slowed spin, still laughing as he let Felicity slide down his chest to avoid dropping her.

Joy and relief fizzing sparkly through her veins, a bubbling champagne of pure emotion, Felicity threw her arms around his neck and hugged him as he banded his arms around her waist and squeezed back.

It was purely the moment. Just the sheer _exhale_ of success.

She never would have done it otherwise.

But his eyes twinkled down at her, face flush now where it had been so pale—flushed and _alive, alive, alive_.

Impulse, no thought.

Her hands framed his face, those grinning cheeks, and she popped onto her toes to press her mouth to his, thundering heartbeat knocking a call and response against her own, his warm breath against her lips as he instinctively returned the press, proof and celebration of life.

As fast as the spark of impulse that started it, the kiss ended.

They pulled away from each other as if the spark had shocked them both, expressions stunned, eyes wide, embrace stiffening.

“Oh my god,” Felicity breathed as he stared, brows pulling together in confusion. This was _Tommy_. Tommy who had just broken up with the love of his life, who was in this tunnel to save _Laurel_ at least much as to save himself and 502 others. “I’m so sorry—”

The comms crackled in their ears and they disentangled like repelling magnets, launching back from each other as Oliver’s and Malcolm’s voices recaptured their attention. 

An aftershock murmured through the ground, weakened, dying, as the unexpected kiss disappeared in the sounds of the distant rooftop fight–as Tommy listened to his father fail to activate the second device. As Tommy listened to his father die.

**Author's Note:**

> I might have cheated slightly because yes, they kiss, but they're very much not a ship at this point of their timeline, if ever.


End file.
